


From the New World

by moon_custafer



Category: People Will Talk (1951)
Genre: Classical Music, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff without Plot, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 16:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15755406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_custafer/pseuds/moon_custafer
Summary: "Do you want to go first, darling?" Debra asked her husband playfully. "You’ve known him longer."





	From the New World

It had been an ordinary, if pleasant, Saturday afternoon— the children were at a neighbor’s house; Mr. Higgins was having a nap after lunch; Lionel had come by with a recently-acquired recording of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9. When the record came to the end of the first side, they paused while Debra made coffee. Returning to the living-room with their mugs, she and the professor curled up on the davenport. Noah cued up the second half, then took his place on Lionel’s other side, eyes closed and fingers lightly tapping on the armrest.

About halfway through the Scherzo, they’d begun joking in whispers about whether Lionel was the Wall of Jericho from that old picture with Lombard and Gable.  
"Of course," added Noah, "perhaps he’d prefer being the hydrogen atom between two oxygen atoms—" Lionel shushed him, adding:  
"No no no no, stop trying to be clever, Noah. Covalent bonds don’t—"

—and the professor would have continued in this vein; except that his friends, at that moment, both leaned in at once to kiss him, and very nearly knocked their heads together.

There followed a pause, during which the violins of the Vienna Philharmonic became increasingly excitable. This tension was broken by a murmur from Lionel:  
"Perhaps you two ought to stagger your attacks."

They all laughed at that, and Debra retreated to Lionel’s side and rested her chin on his shoulder.  
"Do you want to go first, darling?" she asked her husband playfully. "You’ve known him longer."

Lionel turned to Noah, ready with a joke; and abruptly found his mouth shut by the kind of kiss usually seen only on movie screens.

He froze in surprise.

Noah stopped and drew back, an anxious, inquiring look in his brown eyes; then the professor suddenly found his own arm moving, seemingly of its own accord, to his friend’s waist. Smiling, Noah slipped easily back into the kiss. Meanwhile Lionel could feel Debra gently nibbling the nape of his neck and slipping her hand under the hem of the shabby sweater-vest he wore when he wasn’t actually required to be in a suit. The part of his mind that could never stop asking questions wondered why the hell this was happening, why this afternoon in particular. He was quite sure none of them were drunk. It was not even that he had never been the recipient of such attentions before-- just not in a long time; or on this side of the Atlantic.

The last movement of the symphony began, with the brass section sounding a caution, encouragement, or possibly just envious commentary. My god, Debra was biting his shoulder through his shirtsleeve, which was not the kind of thing he’d ever imagined her doing. Noah was— well, that was _exactly_ the kind of thing he’d often imagined Noah doing, but he’d never thought to experience it personally.

The music came to the part that always sounded like “Three Blind Mice,” according to his friends, and Debra was giggling and singing along under her breath. And yet Lionel was quite sure none of them had touched a drop.

Thinking it really ought to be the wife's turn by now, he broke away from Noah with an index finger to his lips, and bent to place a kiss on the crown of Debra's head. She smelled like all those mysterious things women used to set their curls. When he had done, she tilted her face up to look at them, brushing her hair back from her eyes, and gave the professor a little peck just where his mustache folded into the curve of his cheek. Then more playful, exploratory kisses— on his brow, his eyelids, the bridge of his nose. Noah had draped himself around Lionel’s shoulders, and he smelled like aftershave and himself. 

“I feel like the filling in a cheese sandwich,” sighed Lionel between the pair of them.

”Oh no, grilled cheese and apple, at the very least,” declared Noah, giving him a squeeze. “With real butter, none of your oleomargarine.”

Debra leant forward and touched the tip of her nose to Lionel's; her little, turned-up nose. The brass began to get aggressive again.

“Noah, did you just shush the record player?”

“Just a little conducting. The trombones were too loud. It would be inconvenient if they were to wake Debra's father at this juncture.”

“You can’t conduct a recording. It’s already been conducted. Take it up with Kubelik if you want.”

“I’d rather stay here," said Noah. “Mm,” he added, “I do like the back of your head, Professor Barker.” He still had his long arms wrapped about Lionel’s body.

“The front of his head’s quite nice too,” said Debra, surveying the professor. “He blushes very charmingly. And Father has slept through louder things.” She made a face. "Less pleasant things, at that."

Seeking to head off this change in her mood, Lionel kissed her forehead. Something in him demurred at the thought of kissing her on the mouth, even though it seemed extremely unlikely that either she or Noah would object, given everything that had happened in the past few minutes; he felt like it might be painfully intimate. There was such a thing as too much sweetness.

“My dear girl," he whispered. "My dear boy," he said to Noah in what he hoped was a jovial tone, "I’m beginning to wish I’d brought this record over earlier. Since it seems to produce such a curious effect upon you two.”

**Author's Note:**

> After looking up recordings of this symphony that would have been available to these characters in the mid-1950s, I decided to go with Decca's 1956 recording of the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Rafael Kubelik, mainly because "the violins of the Vienna Philharmonic became increasingly excitable" struck me as somehow funnier than the violins of the Chicago Symphony doing the same thing. However I actually cheated and listened to the version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ShmwB7n3H4A


End file.
